Human Evolution as Revealed by the Neandertal Genome

Richard E. (Ed) Green is an assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz.  He's a researcher in the exciting field of ancient DNA, where DNA from fossils are extracted, sequenced, and compared to genomes of living species. He led the analysis of DNA extracted from the 40,000 year old bones of Neandertals, obtaining a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome and revealing that early modern humans interbred with Neandertals. This data is aiding the search for genetic features unique to modern humans and genes that have undergone changes important to human evolution.